Jean Rouch
Director
Biography
Jean Rouch (French: [ʁuʃ]; 31 May 1917, Paris – 18 February 2004, Niger) was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.
He is considered to be one of the founders of cinéma-vérité in France, which shared the aesthetics of the direct cinema. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker for over sixty years in Africa, was characterized by the idea of shared anthropology. Influenced by his discovery of surrealism in his early twenties, many of his films blur the line between fiction and documentary, creating a new style of ethnofiction. He was also hailed by the French New Wave as one of theirs. His seminal film Me a Black (Moi, un noir) pioneered the technique of jump cut popularized by Jean-Luc Godard. Godard said of Rouch in the Cahiers du Cinéma (Notebooks on Cinema) n°94 April 1959, "In charge of research for the Musée de l'Homme (French, "Museum of Man") Is there a better definition for a filmmaker?" Along his career, Rouch was no stranger to controversy.
Filmography
Chronicle of a Summer
as Self 1961
The Mad Masters
as Narrator 1955
The Lovely Month of May
as Self (uncredited) 1963
Son of Gascogne
as Self 1995
The Dreamed Films
as Self 2010
My Conversations on Film
as Himself 2013
Cinématon
as N°1256 1978
The Doll
as Officer (uncredited) 1962
Samba the Great
as Narrator 1977
Cinéma! Cinéma! The French New Wave
as Self 1992
An Egg with No Shell
1992
Letter to Jean Rouch
as Self 1992
Ispahan: A Persian Letter (The Chah Mosque at Ispahan)
as Lui-même 1977
La Nouvelle Vague par elle-même
as Self 1964
Maya Deren, Take Zero
as Himself 2012
Cinéma, de notre temps: Mosso, mosso (Jean Rouch comme si...)
as Himself 1999
Encountering Jean Rouch
2003